First open water dive: ran out of air. WTH?

[boulderjohn]

The impetus for the major changes in the PADI standards, which are significant, was the joint PADI/DAN study on dive fatalities. This indicated that the primary preventable cause of dive fatalities was an air embolism caused by a panicked, rapid ascent following an OOA situation without easy access to a buddy. The new standards emphasize the buddy system, put major emphasis on being aware of current air pressure, have more OOA practice, and focus more on independent dive planning and execution.

In addition, the new standards and procedures put much heavier emphasis on buoyancy control and trim, and people on ScuibaBoard were clearly told they were instrumental in making that happen.

 

[Yoyodyne-88]

these bolded comments are NOT how to teach students. Simply ask them what their air pressure is and they check and report to you? Ridiculous! What you should do is ask them and NOT let them check it... make them tell you the pressure, then show you the gauge and THEN they get to check it themselves (to see if they were correct or not)...

The point being that, a good diver KNOWS their air pressure all the time, without checking it. If they don't (which this little technique will rapidly reveal) then they need to self check more frequently.

I used to make a big deal out of it myself. On the introduction, on the first lesson, I would ask everyone how much gasoline is in their car's gas tank.

Pretty much everyone knows within 1/4 tank or so, how much gasoline is in their car when they are sitting in a dive class. Once students understand that air supply is a hell of a lot more important than gasoline in a gas tank.. they understand why we DEMAND this type of constant awareness of air pressure. I want them checking the air pressure all the time until they can predict exactly what it is.

I agree with the objective - that students/divers should 'know' their reserve.

I expressed it (perhaps too loosely) in terms of how I at first encourage students to develop that habit early on, without being an overbearing drillmaster. I don't think that is 'ridiculous' or poor teaching. Just the opposite - relaxed and happy students learn faster and retain more.

(Someday, ask a person what time it is, immediately after you see them look at their watch. I guarantee they will look at it again before they answer you.)

Nor, when guiding groups of certified divers, is it my task to "test" them on their air-awareness, but rather to ensure they have both a safe and pleasant experience. At the same time, most of them do 'get the hint' and start checking more frequently for themselves if they haven't been doing so already.

 

[lamarpaulski]

You should be worried. You were almost led to disaster by the guy who ought to be semi-paranoid about your safety.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Interesting ...when I read this.......

According to the current PADI standards, when you ask a student how much air they have, they are supposed to respond with reasonable accuracy (within 200 PSI) without looking at their gauges. They are supposed to know that because they had looked at their gauges recently on their own.

EDIT: Bill and I were posting simultaneously.

I thought of this........

(Someday, ask a person what time it is, immediately after you see them look at their watch. I guarantee they will look at it again before they answer you.).

I check my pressure regularly but I think for the most part I check it, evaluate it against where I am on the dive and determine... "That's fine" in which case I continue and don't commit it to memory or "I need to do something" .. turn the dive (now, in a few minutes etc), exit the dive (in estimated time frame), notify the dive leader etc in which case I will commit it to memory.

That said I often play a game with myself to try and be looking at my guage when it hits a specific pressure

 

[UnderwaterBumbleBee]

My gut is that he has been doing so long, that he is confident and sincerely never felt I was in any danger. I bet many here will not agree with much of this. I am leaning toward continuing with him but I don't know for sure.....I will say this, I am prone to over-analyzing things to a fault. I cross-examine people for a living and hate to bring that approach to the rest of my life......

After reading your follow up and comments from instructors on here I would seriously consider not continuing your certification with this person/company. NOTHING can be over-analyzed when it comes to your safety in diving, there should be no second guesses about how you feel when it comes to your safety. What concerns me is that you would want to continue to "learn" from someone who is clearly not teaching according to the standards. This is an awesome amazing sport/hobby but it obviously has some risk involved as you quickly have learned. You want to learn the right way to do stuff, not by someone that's using faulty equipment, isn't asking you to tell him how much air you have left throughout the dive and taking you through a culvert when you aren't even certified yet. Then he explains it all away calmly like a snake charmer trying to persuade you that you couldn't potentially have drowned. I would attempt to get your money back citing your safety concerns. To me this is a key part of learning how to dive/being a diver, knowing when to spot a risk that's not worth taking.

 

[Neilwood]

Let me say this clearly. You are not over analyzing the situation. You were given defective gear. You're air supply was not properly monitored. Knowing that people get low on air during this type of class is exactly why you do not allow it. You do the shallow or "confined water" portion with one tank. Then you switch tanks for the open water portion. That he has been lucky and getting away with this does not make it right.

The remark about the culvert is even more frightening. Seriously. I don't care if it's standing at a 70 degree angle. The standards are very clear on this. If you cannot ascend straight up it's an overhead. Especially in an OW class setting. This:

"Here is the other piece. I asked about the culvert. He did plan to have us swim through it, but-for it being closed off. A few more facts: It is 8-10 feet long and it was angled distinctly upwards. He said it was not level and was not "one way in, one way out" and so is appropriate for OW classes. The rest of the class went through it last week when I missed. He said he wanted to see our how we responded to our impending change in buoyancy once we exited and the air in our BCs had expanded. I asked why he would not have let me know more about this pre-dive, he smiled and said "I would not have been able to see how you responded in the moment, had I done that." I asked what would have happened had I run out of air inside the tube and panicked. He said "Adam, you would have done fine. And I was right there. Had you had the least issue, I would have pulled your @ss right out of there."

Is complete horse crap. I'm guessing by your own words that you are a lawyer? How would you treat a witness when asked why a person died said "the instructor did not pull him out of the tube because he was busy helping another student that came out first and was having buoyancy problems?"

All it would have taken is for him to be distracted for a second or two. In that second you could have spit the reg out because your fin got caught and swallowed a couple lung fulls of water. Think about it. It's an 8 -10 ft tube. You are just entering and your tank gets hung up on the lip. You start to get upset and possibly panic. He's on the other end of that tube. Is he Mr. Fantastic from the fantastic four that his arms are going to magically stretch and grab you?

You don't need to go into a tube to see someone's reaction to a change in buoyancy! You get on the ascent line with a newer diver and ask them to go up a couple feet while you are looking them in the eye. You can be horizontal or vertical. Also if he was with the second student at some point he no longer has direct access to both of you. What happens when you both have an issue? Only one is in the tube. The other is not. Who gets saved?

Wholeheartedly agree with Jim on this - This instructor is clearly breaking standards (and not just slightly bending them).

He asks you to dive with defective equipment, doesn't monitor your air (by checking on a random basis as to its level at various points), proposes to take you in to an overhead environment. Given the additional information above, to me this is potentially the most serious violation of standards. A minor issue on OW can very rapidly become a major issue in an overhead situation which is why people do very rigorous training and have specialised equipment for such as redundant air sources etc. Even within the length of 8-10ft, an equipment malfunction/panic/OOA can cause escalate to a life threatening situation which could be very difficult to remedy.

He sounds like he has been playing fast and loose with peoples safety for so long that he feels it is normal and has forgotten what the actual standards are. The standards have been established over many years in order to prevent cowboys teaching whatever they feel like.

 

[Phil_C]

He asks you to dive with defective equipment,.

The only thing I might take issue with on this thread is this comment - the OP has clearly said he could not read his gauge because of his eyesight in any event, he has commented that the gauge was cloudy, but we all know that a lot of the cloudiness from scratches clear when you get underwater so it may in fact have been readable, if the OP's eyesight had been good enough.

That said on OW1 for an instructor not to be checking himself how much air was left, both by asking and personally verifying, is a major safety no-no regardless of whether the student is checking themselves or not.

Likewise I have a culvert like that one at a local dive site, and have seen many occasions, where as Jim says, the tank has got hit, or caught up going in because the diver has been too high trying to enter. Both these factors, together with the instructors response smack of an instructor who has been doing the same thing with students for long long, he has dropped the ball, is no longer attentive, and has probably lost sight of the reason for the standards just because he has been winging it so long and getting away with it.

I think personally I would be worried what else he was short cutting or not teaching, because as a new diver you really do not know what you don't know, and don't know what you NEED to know in order to be safe. Your account of his response to the discussion just re-inforces this view.

Dive safe, and have fun - Phil.

 

[Neilwood]

The only thing I might take issue with on this thread is this comment - the OP has clearly said he could not read his gauge because of his eyesight in any event, he has commented that the gauge was cloudy, but we all know that a lot of the cloudiness from scratches clear when you get underwater so it may in fact have been readable, if the OP's eyesight had been good enough.

That said on OW1 for an instructor not to be checking himself how much air was left, both by asking and personally verifying, is a major safety no-no regardless of whether the student is checking themselves or not.

Likewise I have a culvert like that one at a local dive site, and have seen many occasions, where as Jim says, the tank has got hit, or caught up going in because the diver has been too high trying to enter. Both these factors, together with the instructors response smack of an instructor who has been doing the same thing with students for long long, he has dropped the ball, is no longer attentive, and has probably lost sight of the reason for the standards just because he has been winging it so long and getting away with it.

I think personally I would be worried what else he was short cutting or not teaching, because as a new diver you really do not know what you don't know, and don't know what you NEED to know in order to be safe. Your account of his response to the discussion just re-inforces this view.

Dive safe, and have fun - Phil.

Point taken but if it has been raised by a student as a potential problem, the instructor should be even more vigilant in either personally checking the gauge or asking the student to. Seems like neither happened here (it seems the gas situation was not monitored by the instructor at all) which sounds like a breach of standards (not an instructor so could be wrong).

As you say given the standards violations he has been shown to have made, what else is missing/incorrect/dangerous?

 

[seeker242]

How an instructor could allow one of his students to run out of air, and think it's not that big of a deal, is completely beyond my comprehension...

Doesn't matter why it happened or how it happened. The fact that it did happen is all that really matters. The only word that comes to mind here with regards to the instructor is "incompetence". A competent instructor knows how much air his students have left....There is no excuse for not knowing this IMO.

 

[wspalding]

It does however, highlight the importance of swimming side by side with a buddy, versus following single file. I see a lot of single file buddy teams out there.

I never finished a post I once started to write about "solo" diving that is consistent with this point. I think many divers are essentially diving solo even though they are diving with a buddy. If your buddy is too far away to reach them or get their attention, they can't really be of much assistance in an emergency situation unless they happen to turn and look at the right time and see the problem. In a drift dive situation, a buddy leading in a single file arrangement might not even be able to get back to a diver in trouble behind them if the current is swift and the distance great enough. I don't think enough time is spent in most OW classes regarding how to be an effective buddy once you start the dive. Executing some scenarios while in a controlled setting could sure help to drive that home.

With regards to the DI not checking the PSI of his student, I think he was exhibiting bad practice not just as an instructor, but as a dive buddy. I have hundreds of dives under my belt, my most frequent dive buddy has well over 10,000 and we both still check each others' psi at points during the dive. At first when I started diving with him I was annoyed at his practice of grabbing my SPG and checking it, but I now know it wasn't meant as a criticism of my dive skills, and this was particularly important when I first started diving as I was far less efficient than him on conserving gas during the dive and he used that information to help determine when to call the dive. Now that we are similar in gas consumption I will show him my SPG and he shows me his as we are nearing the end of the dive. I think it is just good practice to teach students this kind of practice as part of their OW training.